In many homeschools, parents decide upon a curriculum of study and then assign work to their students. In these homes, parents take on the role of Teacher, Principal, Curriculum Designer or some combination of the three.

In other homes, however, the students choose what to learn and do. What, then, is the parent’s role when guiding self-directed learners?

The answer is — facilitate.

In homes where parents are partners in learning, I call these parents Facilitators. In homeschools where students take the lead, parents as Facilitators have a different job than that of instructing students and dictating projects.

Facilitators of learning may —

Connect students to resources — by listening to students, performing research, and then by introducing products, web sites, people and places that could be useful to a child’s studies

Introduce ideas, reframe concepts — that result in adding a different perspective or another dimension to the learning

Encourage and support — by listening, acting as sounding board or brainstorming; by providing transportation, procuring materials, participating in discussions, guiding instruction, or any other way that might be needed

Help to track learning — alone or in partnership with students, to document experiences and monitor that learning has taken place

Do not be concerned if your role as homeschooling parent differs from the role of other parents you meet. Individual differences and state laws, combined with the educational model you have adopted in your home will dictate your duties and responsibilities. There are many hybrids and variations of homeschooling. What matters most is that your student receives what he or she needs to be successful, whatever that may be.

While cleaning a seldom-used closet in our guest area, I found this index card I taped to a shelf some years ago. It was there to help my children, some still very young at the time, put folded towels away during chore time.

This little forgotten sign, now smudged, crumpled and ugly, needed some desperate attention. After cleaning the closet and refolding all of the guest linens inside, I debated between two different options. Option 1 involved creating a new index card and hanging it back the same way. Option 2 was all about making a newer, more attractive sign using my computer and laminating it, preserving the instructions for years to come.

Option 3, which came a few minutes later, was to take the sign down forever. Because while thinking about it a little while longer, I realized my children didn’t need the sign any more. They were older and had already learned where all of the towels go. Keeping the closet tidy no longer appeared on anyone’s job chart anyway. This was no longer a problem area in my home. Therefore, written instructions were no longer needed.

When homeschooling and managing a home (and sometimes even a home business, too) so much can be happening at the same time. Scheduling, organizing and being prepared to handle all of life’s little emergencies are necessary for keeping the entire operation going smoothly. But these systems must be maintained, too, lest they become badly out of date.

When was the last time you looked at your schedule? Your child’s job chart? Your household maintenance calendar, revolving meal plan, pet grooming schedules, to-do lists or anything else you do on a regular basis? When was the last time you replaced a calendar, cleaned out your Inbox or filed away the receipts you’d been saving for tax purposes?

How are your old systems working for you now?

As life changes, so must our systems. Just as large organizations undertake preventative maintenance and perform routine updates, so every family should also review its systems from time to time. Taking a look at what they’re doing and — more importantly – how these systems are working is crucial to keeping the household engine running smoothly. Updating anything that needs updating, discarding anything that no longer works, and creating new systems where problem areas exist are the only ways to prevent minor issues from exploding into major chaos.

Today, take a look at what is working in your home, and what is not. Jot a list of those areas that need a little fine-tuning. Then, spend the next couple of days maintaining your systems so that they function well for you now. Just like my towel instructions, eliminate anything that has become unnecessary, silly or just excessive. Instead of reusing an old system, as I almost did, re-channel those energies to areas that need you more.

Living on one income isn’t always easy. Having to purchase books and materials for homeschooling, sometimes with larger-than-average families, can add to this burden.

Fortunately, homeschoolers are great at cutting corners without necessarily cutting quality. Saving money while still homeschooling is not only possible, but happening all around the country every single day.

Those wondering about being able to afford homeschooling often ask how families do it. The answer lies in making the necessary changes in lifestyle as to effectively impact spending. In order to do this, a change in thinking must occur as well.

While there are specific strategies that homeschoolers use to make one-income survival work, the general ideas are explained below:

1. Live frugally

Living frugally is something that many homeschooling families have turned into an art form. Purchasing clearance and second-hand items, accepting donations of gently used items, drastically reducing household expenses in areas like telephone and television usage, and saving money on the grocery bill by shopping in bulk or clipping coupons are just a few of the many ways that homeschoolers manage to get by. Saving money on these items doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing quality, either. What it means instead is spending less by shopping more wisely than before.

2. Temporarily live with less

Homeschooling doesn’t last forever. But while it does, families sometimes need to make due with less. Fewer family vacations, fewer luxury purchases, and fewer activities than may have been possible before homeschooling began. Postponing large expenses, or eliminating them altogether, is often needed to keep the boat afloat. And while this may seem extreme, it doesn’t mean the family must be miserable during this time period. Free and inexpensive solutions exist for many of these things, making the transition from having more to having less easier than one might think.

3. Find creative sources of income

Stay at home parents can be masterful at finding ways to earn income on their own. Many a home business has been started right from the kitchen table and home phone. Telecommuting is popular, too, enabling formerly full-time employees to reduce hours to part-time and continue working right from home. On a smaller scale, however, there are other things that homeschoolers can do and earn money in their spare time. Answering surveys, answering phones, and answering mail can all be accomplished from home. Scoring exams, translating documents, and creating resumes are other examples, too. And still other parents buy and resell items at auction, earn by blogging, hold frequent yard sales and perform odd jobs for friends and neighbors. Income does not necessarily have to come from a regular job, thus looking at work from a different angle may help.

4. Choose wisely

Though it may take some practice, carefully considering options and choosing wisely can make all the difference when homeschooling. Rather than spending with no forethought whatsoever, spending during the homeschooling years must be carefully planned. Families that may be used to eating out on a regular basis or buying new vehicles every several years will want to choose much more wisely when making these purchases than before. A more expensive sit-down restaurant may be replaced with a family-style buffet. A new vehicle could be a more fuel efficient model or a smaller one than before. Brand-name labels on clothing items or household furnishings are other areas to look at, so that when presented with a choice of several items, the least expensive model becomes the obvious choice.

5. Adapt, be flexible

When dollars are scarce, it becomes far more important to roll with things than ever before. Trying to stick with routines from the past, staying loyal to people, places or brands, and even associating with friends and other things from the pre-homeschooling days will surely result in frustration. Learning to say no to costly activities or bowing out of obligations because they simply cut too deep into the monthly budget can be very humbling, even embarrassing, when one is used to certain quality of life. Explaining the new budgetary guidelines to family and friends is not always easy either. But just as new parents must make sacrifices (in sleep, appearance, work hours, and friendships), so homeschoolers must make sacrifices for the sake of schooling as well. The sooner a family learns to adapt to the new set of circumstances and the more willing they are to be flexible in terms of what they may or may be able to do under the new guidelines, that easier the transition will be. Digging heels in deeper will only foster resentment, unhappiness and possibly even debt. Changing the mindset and beginning to accept what things are like now, as opposed to how they were before, brings a greater sense of peace than constantly trying to swim against the tide.

If still in doubt about the ability to afford homeschooling, it may be helpful to crunch the numbers to prove it. Calculating the cost of transportation, uniforms and/or clothing, school supplies and accessories, lunches and snacks, attending classmate birthday parties on weekends, going on field trips, buying teacher gifts and making classroom donations, plus all of the other things that families spend on public education, it will become clearly obvious that homeschooling isn’t such a stretch of the imagination after all. Plus, when parents who work to pay for private tuition or afterschool child care also factor in their expenses (wardrobe, transportation, hair care, and so on) homeschooling moves within closer reach because the savings are even greater.

Every once in a while, you’ll meet a family that refers to themselves as “After-schoolers”. After-schoolers are folks with children enrolled in schools but who reinforce and/or supplement learning at home, after school hours, in a homeschool-like fashion. It’s a great term, really, as it means exactly what it is — schooling after school.

Whatever your feelings on why this may be necessary, how people manage to squeeze it in, or why people would choose to do this at all — the question is, Is after-schooling okay? The answer is, yes it is. And though there is no research, it appears to be growing [slightly] in popularity, too.

Much like many parents oversee and supervise the completion of homework after school, – parents conduct homeschool after school. And like many parents help with homework that is assigned every day, after-schooling parents help with material at home, too.

What takes place during after-schooling is up to each individual family. Some families like to study new things after school, like foreign languages, hobbies such as ham radio or model trains, or hands-on activities like building furniture or organic gardening. Other families prefer to stick to the basics already being introduced in school, like language arts, mathematics or history — either doing more of what is being taught in school, or adding on to what teachers don’t have time to teach in the regular classroom. Some even enroll children in outside classes, tutoring centers and other academic activities during summers and weekends, either to catch kids up on skills or advance them beyond what they have been able to accomplish in school.

So, to answer to the question, after-schooling is certainly okay. Parents are well within their rights to teach children at home (after all, they’ve been teaching the kids things all along anyway), whether before school, after school or on the weekends. The practicality of after-schooling is another matter altogether, but as long as everyone has the desire and the time, there is nothing wrong with it.

Though some would argue that school children are busy enough and that parents need to protect their child’s down-time, family life and social life, the decision really lies with the parent. After-schooling may work in some situations but not in others. But there is nothing wrong, and certainly nothing illegal, about doing so.

When it comes to down time, in mom circles, conversations often start and end the same way. I’m sure you’ve heard it before. Maybe participated in it.

It goes like this:

One mom complains of being exhausted/having little time for anything.Other moms totally understand and offer sympathy.Everybody agrees that there is just no way for homeschooling moms to catch a break.The end.

There was a time that I was totally that mom. Eventually, though, I learned I didn’t have to be.

This kind of thing is why I created this web site — to help others learn from my mistakes experience. Had I only had a helpful friend or experienced homeschooler explain it to me, I would have had less stress and joy during our early homeschool years, too.

Here’s what I wish an experienced homeschooler had told me…

T: Take time off. You heard that right. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s exactly what moms need during times of stress and exhaustion. Don’t quit, mind you. Just step back, rest for a while, and reconnect with your spouse and your children, too. It’s never a good time to make decisions when you’re overwhelmed. Give things a couple of days off first.

P: Prioritize. Really do it. As in, changing diapers and feeding children are priorities, whereas having a picture-perfect kitchen is not. Or, paying bills and brushing teeth are considered priorities, whereas teaching Latin and field trips every Friday are not. After looking at what really needs to be done in a day (being a wife and mother, for example) and what doesn’t (think anywhere from bread-baking to blogging), life suddenly looks a whole lot different.

C: Change Your Thinking. Let go of what you thought homeschooling should be. This isn’t lazy or foolish. We’re talking self-preservation. You won’t be dissing your students, either. The truth is, homeschooling isn’t supposed to be that hard. And it’s definitely not supposed to bring anyone to the brink of physical exhaustion. Letting go of your image of what homeschooling should be, and accepting what it really is — in your home, at this time – is the only solution. And that’s enough. Case closed.

As a homeschooling mentor, coach and advisor, I often meet parents (usually moms) pushing themselves so hard they lose sight of the joy and the rewards. If this describes you, remember T-P-C for guidance. This took me years to discover, but I promise will help you right now.

Few things come together as nicely as homeschooling and working from home. For parents who must work, there is nothing better than doing it from home and still having the joy and satisfaction of homeschooling the children, too. Though it may not be easy, it’s not only possible — it happens all the time.

But what does it take to homeschool with a work-at-home job?

Obviously, every situation is a little different. But, following this list of Golden Rules can definately help.

Golden Rules of Homeschooling & Working from Home

1. Scheduling

The biggest key to working successfully from home and homeschooling at the same time is scheduling. And unfortunately, if you aren’t a scheduler, it’s time to get over it. The only way that proper homeschooling can occur is if all parties agree to set aside the adequate amount of time needed to do what has to get done. It’s just that simple.

2. Organization

Hands-down, a well-organized household is another trick for making the magic happen. If everything is where it is supposed to be, and nobody spends more than a few seconds locating what they need, both time and sanity come out very much ahead.

3. Flexibility

In homeschool, in family life, in just about everything, flexibility makes the world-go-round when parents work from home. While it’s important to remain professional on the job and diligently homeschool the children, too, adopting the attitude that not everything will always go as planned is important for avoiding the inevitable disappointment when it doesn’t.

4. Guilt-free permission to say no

When life gets very busy, something has to give. Wise parents learn early on that doing it all only works for Super Heroes and that ordinary people wilt very quickly when trying to do the impossible. Saying no and sticking to it, without a glimmer of thought about depriving the children of something potentially enlightening or life-altering, is your new mantra. Practice it daily.

5. A rock solid support system

Last but not least, cultivate a network of friends and family who respect and understand your goals. Surrounding yourself with a circle of positive, supportive people may seem impossible given your hectic schedule and lack of time for a hot shower let alone a telephone conversation with a good friend. But nurturing these relationships actually saves you time in the long run, as these individuals will make themselves available when you need them, not to mention act as sounding-boards (or punching bags) if it all becomes a little bit too much.

Yes, you can do it. Others have and you can, too. But working at home while homeschooling has many strings attached. Letting go of fantasies and adopting a more realistic look at the big picture is the price. A lifelong bond with your children and giving them the world’s greatest advantage is the reward.

Parents considering homeschooling sometimes wonder what homeschooling looks like. Those who have never met a homeschooling family before or know very little about the subject may have a hard time imagining what the work of a homeschool teacher is really all about. Particularly the teaching part, which few ever witness because it usually takes place inside the family home.

Folks may wonder,

Does mom use a lectern or chalkboard?Are lectures followed by question and answer sessions?Do homeschooled kids raise their hands to ask questions?Where do the children sit – at desks, tables, on their beds, or where?

So, what does homeschool teaching actually look like?

The truth is that homeschooling moms and dads may choose to act like “teachers” if they want to, doing all of the kinds of things that teachers do — including writing on chalkboards and asking children to raise their hands before responding to questions. Some parents enjoy this technique and their children find it fun to imitate school, only at home.

On the other hand, parents may also just continue to act like moms and dads — which isn’t a far stretch from teachers anyway since parents already “teach” all of the time. And even if moms and dads don’t look like what most people think teachers should look like, they are teachers nonetheless.

Talk to a couple dozen homeschooling parents and you’ll begin to get a pretty good idea of how the teaching is done in homeschooling households. What you’ll probably hear is that the kind of teaching depends on the subject or the activity being taught.

You’ll also hear that teaching must continually adapt to the age of a child, which methods or materials are being use and how “involved” the children want their parents to be (or need them to be). This is why, in some cases, parents sit right beside a child, ready to go over the assignment, answer any questions, or jump in and help whenever they are needed. In other cases, parents meet with their students periodically throughout the day, and then walk away in between meetings while children work independently.

It all depends on the situation.

Very young students, non-readers and students who require constant help or encouragement will need mom or dad nearby during a good part of the day.

Older students, kids doing virtual schooling, or students completing independent work (quiet reading, for instance) can be given more space.

When multiple kids or entire families school together, parents tend to stay somewhere in the center of activity, accessible to all of the children at once.

And of course with subjects like physical education, music, or with activities that take place outside the home, teaching techniques will need to change yet again.

The great thing is that parents can adapt to each situation. Plus, they never have to continue something that doesn’t work the first or second time around. The changing role of the parent/teacher is all part of the personalized experience that is homeschooling.

As if their plates weren’t already full enough, millions of Americans have also decided to add a large helping of homeschooling onto their dinner plates as well. What was just an ordinary busy life can — for some – become an extraordinarily overwhelming life, complete with the additional duties of schooling and being home all day, not to mention the scary feeling of being responsible for it all.

But homeschooling doesn’t have to feel this way. And — it shouldn’t!

The homeschooling life can be a joy and should never be something families dread. If it becomes a chore or something much worse, changes absolutely need to be made.

Heed these instructions and see if they don’t make a quick and very positive impact on your feelings toward homeschooling. The joy CAN return after these 3 simple steps:

1. Take a break. First and foremost, stop everything! Take a day off, a mini-vacation or field trip, “veg out” with television and some good books, or do whatever it takes to stop thinking about homeschooling for a little bit — a day, a week, or even two if it takes that long. Breathe. Do something fun. Stepping back for a little bit will allow you to look at homeschooling much more objectively in a couple of days.

2. Find support. If you haven’t already, now would be the time to seek out others like you. Get online, make some calls, hang out at the park or library in the mornings, or anything you can do to meet other moms and dads you can talk to. It’s amazing how much better you’ll feel after hearing that you aren’t alone, and that others have experienced the very same thing at one time or another.

3. Make some changes. In your homeschool. Or in your life. In expectations, in curriculum, in scheduling, in activites, or in anything else. Just make a change. You can’t expect anything to be different if you keep doing the same thing over and over again. Once you begin homeschooling again, by all means, switch things up. Begin gradually. Drop a subject or two. Change from a book to an online program. School later in the day. Let your child pick what she wants to do a couple of times a week. Sit outside instead of inside. Whatever it takes — just make a change. And if that one doesn’t work, make another. And another. Until things feel better.

Lastly, by all means, don’t give up! Trying these simple rescue strategies are guaranteed to make positive changes — if not save your homeschooling entirely. And please take a moment to read this post about giving up too soon.

As much as I hate to admit it, the condition of my home this morning was, well, less than acceptable. Not that I look for perfection, mind you, because I was required to lower my standards many years ago when I married my free spirited soul-mate (a contradiction in terms, I realize…if you know me…), began producing off-spring, moved out to the country and began adopting all manner of homeless dogs.

But when things are obviously dirty or smelly, not just the usual-dirty as in flecks of garden mulch on the floors, or normal-smelly as in dog breath in the air, I know that something must be seriously wrong.

And, right after noticing the dirt and smelling the smell, that’s what hit me this morning.

So, after cleaning the bathroom (strangely remembering my days in grad school and use of the New York City subways), and inviting the dogs to help me clean the kitchen floor (slurp!), I did a little investigating.

I began by interrogating the children to determine who hadn’t been doing their chores. I typically supervise chore time, and probably would have noticed a lapse in somebody’s participation, but figured this was as good a place to start as any. But, since the kids all knew their chores by heart, I decided I was barking up the wrong tree. Sorry, kids.

The next thing I did was spend some quality time with my chore charts. After taking them all down from the pantry where they like to hang out, I looked them up and down, backward and forward, and inside and out. I noted both what needs to be done around the house on a regular basis and on a rotating basis, and then made sure that some member of the family was assigned that particular chore every time it needed to get done. That checked out fine, too. No holes that I could see.

The only other thing I could think of at the time, which is where I headed last, was to check the school schedules. Here again, I looked at the daily sequence of activities, allotted amounts of time for all of the different subjects (I use block scheduling for the most part) and even spent some more time reflecting on every child and his or her age, capabilities, level of maturity, plus anything else that I thought might be impacting household maintenance. Nothing jumped out at me. Weird.

It was about that time that I began snacking on some of the holiday goodies still loitering around on the counters of my kitchen. If you are anything like us, you still have crumbs at the bottoms of all the holiday cookie tins, stray candy canes laying around (because nobody really eats those), a box of Russell Stover’s caramels partially eaten, and a bowl of mixed fruits and nuts laced with hard candy, ornament hooks, rolled up little wads of Scotch tape, and a variety of other assorted odds and ends that have fallen into the bowl since the last time you checked.

That’s when it hit me – VACATION. Winter vacation is the reason our home isn’t as clean as it usually is. Duh.

Wait a minute…huh?

It goes against common sense. One would think that, with all that time at home, and no homeschooling going on, the house would actually be cleaner, right? Not the case.

Like many of you, our family took a little bit of time off from homeschooling to enjoy a holiday break. And a lot has happened during those two weeks, not the least of which included frequent visitors, a steady influx of new merchandise, and greater-than-normal amounts of eating, cooking, shopping, staying home, using the fireplace, and generally kicking up dust and making a mess. Not to mention those piles and piles of papers and extra trips to the trash cans.

It isn’t that we weren’t doing our chores. It’s just during that busier times of the year, or busier times in our lives, our regular chore systems may not necessarily hold up.

It’s like the chore charts were doing their very best, chugging along like little engines, but ultimately collapsed under the pressure of all that vacation activity.

Sometimes even the best systems of household organization aren’t completely perfect. They work under some circumstances, even most circumstances, but not all. They hold up well during normal days, normal weeks, and normal times of our lives, but not when changes occur that disrupt the daily flow.

It is important to realize that chore charts, school schedules, or any system of planning and organization for that matter work MOST OF THE TIME. That is, on average days, typical days, and the kinds of days the charts were designed to handle.

But sometimes, systems can break down during busy times, stressful times, or as in this case – vacation times.

What to do? There are a couple of options.

The first is what I decided to do (compulsive as it may seem) – devise a regular chore system plus a more intense chore system. The regular chore charts still hang on the pantry doors, and will continue to be the primary charts that we use in our home. Then, I’ll break out the intensive chore charts when we need them, for times when a little more intensive cleaning and maintenance is needed.

Another option would be to go ahead and add a chore next to every child’s name called, “other” or “as needed”. This extra chore would be one that you assign as needed, and direct the children verbally as to what that additional chore might be, if and when it is needed.

A final strategy is to call for an impromptu cleaning period from time to time, independent of chore charts altogether. [Read THIS to see what I mean.]

Do what works for you.

The lesson is, when scheduling and charting, remember that you are only planning for typical days – not extraordinary days.

So, when your home isn’t up to your standards, taking a good hard look at your existing chore system could be just the ticket. And, if you (gasp!) don’t have a chore system at all, it’s time to create one. Pronto.

A wise person once wrote (when referring to child behavior) that you know a system of positive reinforcement is working when an unpleasant behavior stops. Applying that to chore charting, you know your system is working when your home is clean and in good order.

Parents may choose to follow a school-like curriculum to keep pace with what a child would normally be learning in school. Or, depending on their needs and philosophy, could take another track altogether in which to hone student skills or provide respite from the unpleasantness of recent school events.

Talk to a reliable homeschooling representative to get information about temporary homeschooling. Often the best contact is one that has experience both in and out of local schools, and can offer advice as to how to begin homeschooling in a hurry, plus help parents meet the goal of returning the child to school in the future.

Dr. Marie-Claire Moreau is a college professor who traded in her tenure to become a homeschool mom 20+ years ago. A homeschooling pioneer and the founder of many groups and organizations, she works to advance home education, and is an outspoken supporter of education reform coast to coast. Her book, Suddenly Homeschooling: A Quick Start Guide to Legally Homeschool in Two Weeks, is industry-acclaimed as it illustrates how homeschooling can rescue children and families from the public school system, and how anyone can begin homeschooling within a limited time-frame, with no teaching background whatsoever. A writer, a homeschool leader, and a women’s life coach, Marie-Claire mentors in a variety of areas that impact health, education and lifestyle. A conference speaker, she has appeared at FPEA, H.E.R.I., Home Education Council of America, The Luminous Mind, Vintage Homeschool Moms, iHomeschool Network, and many other events. Her articles have appeared in and on Holistic Parenting, CONNECT,Homefires, Homemaking Cottage, Kiwi, Circle of Moms, and hundreds of sites and blogs nationwide. Marie-Claire can be reached at contactmarieclaire@gmail.com.